


every choice a thousand times

by knight_tracer, lady_ragnell



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Audio Format: M4B, Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Don't copy to another site, M/M, Podfic, Podfic Length: 2-2.5 Hours, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-07-10 08:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19902418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_tracer/pseuds/knight_tracer, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: Chirrut and Baze die and wake up in the Jedhan desert on the day the Empire rises. They have twenty years to make sure it all happens better this time.





	every choice a thousand times

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** past character death (undone in new timeline), minor character death, past child neglect and abandonment
> 
> The title is from "If I Had My Time Again" from the Groundhog's Day musical.

Podfic Length: 2:08:02  
Download Links: [mp3](http://knight-tracer.parakaproductions.com/Podfic/Every%20Choice%20a%20Thousand%20Times.mp3) click to stream, right-click 'save as' to download | [m4b](http://knight-tracer.parakaproductions.com/Podfic/Every%20Choice%20a%20Thousand%20Times.m4b) right-click 'save as' to download

One moment, Chirrut is in the middle of chaos and noise, the blanketing warmth of the Force coming up around him while he tells Baze—almost begs Baze—to find him in the Force, to believe enough to find him even after Chirrut's death, and the next moment, there is silence.

Chirrut is a little surprised he's alive to notice the change and not in pain on top of it. In less pain than usual, even, without the fifty years of aches and pains that living has given him. Becoming one with the Force is nice that way. It also smells like the Jedhan desert.

He doesn't feel dead, though. He'd think he could tell if he was. Maybe he'd have some new knowledge, or an old mentor or the Force itself would come to lead him into the stream of the universe.

And he can hear someone groaning next to him. Death probably shouldn't involve moaning and groaning, much less familiar moaning and groaning. “What, you lasted thirty seconds without me?” Chirrut inquires. “I thought you'd do better.”

“Chirrut,” says Baze, and then he's scrambling across a few feet of sand, touching Chirrut's arm, his face, his robes—the robes of a Guardian of the Whills, proper and new, or new-ish. That's a point in favor of the afterlife and not whatever other possibilities there are.

“Yes, I know, I died.”

“No, idiot,” says Baze, so it really is him. “You're alive.”

That seems unlikely, but Baze barely believes true things, let alone wild ones. He must be sure, if he's saying it. Chirrut listens, and he breathes in. In the distance, far in the distance, the sounds of ships and a city. His city. He knows it well, after so long, but it's an impossible city. A dead one. He heard it die. And now, he hears too many ships overhead, and screaming. There's only one day he's heard it like this, when … “Tell me what's happening to niJedha.”

“The Empire is laying claim to the city,” says Baze. “On its first day. You're young again. So am I, I think.”

Chirrut ponders that. “Pretty shitty afterlife.” He frowns. “We were in the city when we heard the news. Why are we here now?”

“Aren't you going to say that all is as the Force wills it?”

“I'll say that when I know exactly what it is that the Force wills.” Baze takes a deep breath to say something annoyed, and Chirrut impatiently waves him silent so he can listen and think. He knows the sounds and smells of the coming of the Empire, but Baze knows the sight, knows what kind of ships came and how many, the day everything changed. From a distance, he trusts Baze's knowledge over his own.

They're in the past, and they're young again, so perhaps the Baze and Chirrut they used to be are gone, or more accurately twenty years distant. They're in the past for a reason, or they would be in the same place they were on that terrible day. The Force wants them to have time to think. But the big things—the Empire itself, that can't be changed. Not by them. Something can, though. They'll change the story just by being in it with different memories.

“We're supposed to live,” he decides. Baze snorts. “What? Jyn and Cassian were going to get the message out at any cost, so it's not just the message. We need to survive Scarif, and we need twenty years to do it.”

“You're crazy.”

Chirrut stands up. It's so nice that his knees don't hurt. And that he's alive, but he's used to not being dead. He's been not dead for more than fifty years. Good knees are a novelty. “What do you think happened?”

“Oh, I think we're in the past, but what can we change? Two Guardians with nothing left to guard, and knowledge but no power.” Baze struggles to stand too, and catches Chirrut's hand in his before Chirrut can start walking. “Who knows if we'll be here long, or if we're just seeing the path we took before we died?”

Chirrut starts dragging Baze along by his hand. “Maybe we are. So let's change something today and see if it works. The Empire doesn't think to raid the Temple of the Whills until tomorrow, and they'll be suspicious if everything is gone, but we can save some of the important treasures. I'm not sure if we should risk the crystals, but other things.”

“Chirrut.” Baze hauls on his arm until he stops. “You think this can be done?”

A day ago, Baze wouldn't have asked the question, knowing the answer would be no. A day ago, Chirrut wouldn't have bothered answering the question, because he would have been sure the answer was yes. Now, he thinks neither of them is sure which one of them is right, but Chirrut still trusts that the Force is not cruel, just as much as he trusts that it's not kind. “What else would we do?”

“We could run,” says Baze, though he doesn't sound sure of it. “Live a long life on the Outer Rim, out past the Empire. Let it all happen to someone else.”

“Could we?” Chirrut asks, truly curious. Baze's sense of honor and duty has always been just as strong as Chirrut's faith. These are doubts from having died five minutes ago and twenty years from now, but they only have so much time to decide. If they're going to run, they need to turn away from niJedha now.

Baze sighs, long and deep, but there's only one answer to the question, really, whether it's the Force or something else that brings them here again. “No. Jyn, Cassian, Bodhi. They're children—Jyn may not even be born. If they remember, they won't get to choose to run away.”

And they need to be here waiting for them. They might not be able to prevent the planet-killer from being built, but they can sow the seeds of its destruction again, and do better this time. For themselves and for the others. “Bodhi is in niJedha now,” he says, pondering it. “Should we find him?”

“You're asking me? You usually insist on coming up with the plan.”

“It's a new life. May as well try something new.”

Baze snorts. “We'll see how long that lasts. No, leave him. We'll watch for him, in time, but now he may as well stay with his mother and not know what's coming. If he remembers, he'll find us.”

“Let's hope he doesn't,” says Chirrut. “Some things he might not want to remember.” Bodhi, the first time they met, had been through something terrible, thanks to Saw Gerrera. They'll have to deal with that too. Chirrut will have to keep a list. Or make Baze keep a list, since it's not like he can write it down. With a purpose in mind, Chirrut starts walking again. Baze stays where he is, hand still in Chirrut's, so Chirrut stops walking and groans. “What now? We know what we need to do.”

“It's daylight,” says Baze, a little amused. “The Imperials will notice us walking into the temple and taking away the valuables. I thought maybe you'd wait till dark.”

Chirrut sighs. “If we must. Let's find some shelter. It feels like morning, and if I remember right, it's a long, hot day.”

*

The first few days are like the first few days the first time, but this time, Chirrut and Baze have some of the sacred texts, one precious kyber crystal, a few other relics that the Imperials don't seem to miss when they come on their raid. The other Guardians, the ones who live and who don't turn and run, ask how they knew the Imperials would breach the sacred space, and Baze answers, snarling about the rumors of the Jedi slaughtered, even the children. Would people who slaughter children care for the sanctity of a temple?

They ask him where he heard about the rumors, but Baze has always been a strange one. They don't ask too many times.

Chirrut does what he did the first time. He prays with the people who have faith enough left to pray. He preaches, tells the old stories that don't seem dangerous to the always-watching stormtroopers because they never heard stories.

He keeps his ears on the children who run around the streets, even when they're frightened. He doesn't recognize Bodhi, but there's time to seek him out. Baze, already comfortably out of his robes, has more freedom in the city, and Chirrut thinks that he's looking, while he runs errands and deals with emergencies.

It takes weeks for Chirrut to realize that from the outside, it looks like he and Baze are falling in love, because it happened like this the first time. In the terror, in the exhaustion, in the clinging to everything they once knew, there were touches of the hand, dinners alone, whispered conversations. And now they have all of it again, but with the lack of urgency of those who've had twenty years together and don't need to rip each other's clothes off at every opportunity.

Though there's a little of that too, when they can get the privacy. Chirrut is a great believer in enjoying being young again.

He tells Baze about it in one of their rare moments of true privacy. “Does it really matter what they think?” he inquires when Chirrut finishes.

“No. It's just funny.”

After an unimpressed moment, Baze allows himself to chuckle. “I suppose it is. We get to play a joke on everyone, if you think about it. Question is just who will be laughing at the end of it.”

*

“The Rebellion,” Chirrut says nearly a year in, when he and Baze are alone. The Guardians, like they did the first time, are drifting away, finding other lives in safer places. This time, though, a few more of them are staying. They have the relics Chirrut and Baze saved to rally around, kept in caches the Empire can never hope to find.

“Saw Gerrera again? That brought us pain last time.”

The first time, working with Saw felt like a necessity. It kept people safe. It kept them safe. But not safe enough. “We need to be friendly with him, for Jyn, but we need to be friendly with the rest of the Rebels, too. And when we are, we need to get to know Bodhi, so he knows, someday, that he can come to us.”

“You have a plan.”

“I have … something,” Chirrut allows. He can almost see the shape it could take. Almost. “It may not save them, may not save us, but it will make their lives easier, Bodhi's and Jyn's. They'll die less hurt.”

“Cassian?”

“I don't know what to do about him,” Chirrut admits. “Maybe if we can get into the Rebellion he'll trust us.”

Baze grunts, and Chirrut lets him think about it. “Saw first,” he finally says. “He really needs to trust us, if you're planning to suggest that we can keep Jyn safe. And we'll need someplace a little better than this to live.”

It will mean work besides preaching, for Chirrut, but he can sacrifice his vows for a better life. The Force is still all around him. He still has the knowledge of his forebears. And Jyn won't be a child soldier, a mistrustful woman. “Maybe a neighborhood where the Rooks might live? I know you found them.”

He can hear fabric move as Baze shrugs. “A few months back. They aren't starving.”

That's something. “Saw first. Then the other rebels.”

“It's dangerous to play both sides,” Baze points out.

“Yes, but we need them both, so we'll do it. Keep Bodhi away from Saw, keep Jyn safe, make sure the Rebellion trusts them.” Chirrut sighs. Looking back on twenty years of the Empire feels like a blur. Looking forward to nearly twenty years more sounds like a slog. At least they'll be changing things enough to liven them up. “There are some things I still don't know.”

“Nice to see you admitting that you're not omniscient.”

“Only the Force knows all,” Chirrut says, because after so long, he knows how to provoke Baze. “If we tell the Rebellion we have Jyn Erso …”

“And if we don't tell them,” Baze agrees, seeing Chirrut's train of thought the way he always does, even if he denies it. “So it will be her choice. Even if she doesn't know, we shouldn't lie to her.” Chirrut opens his mouth, and Baze hushes him. “I'm not going to tell a child about her own death, you fool. Just going to tell her that people know her father's name, and not everyone is going to be friendly because of it. It's true enough.”

True enough. If honest Baze can live with that, then so can Chirrut. “Then we'll find somewhere to live, and we'll start dealing with the rebels.” He sighs. “Saw always liked you more. You deal with him. I'll see about getting off-world and contacting other rebels. A pilgrimage, maybe.”

“A pilgrimage for a forbidden religion,” Baze points out wryly, but he doesn't sound too upset. “It's a start,” he adds, only a little grudging, and that's good enough for Chirrut.

*

“Mama says that you're a Guardian, but there aren't Guardians any more,” says a young voice when Chirrut is meditating on his front step and staying away from Baze while he cleans up a mess in the kitchen that had nothing to do with Chirrut at all. It's not Chirrut's fault that he's not used to having a kitchen.

Bodhi's voice as a child sounds nothing like his voice as a man, but Chirrut recognizes him. Baze said when they found an empty house that it wasn't far from Bodhi's. Maybe even too close. “There isn't anything to guard anymore,” he corrects. “There's a difference.”

“That's why you live here?”

“We have to live somewhere,” says Chirrut. Bodhi doesn't know him. It's a relief, in a way. He'll do better without the memories from his first life, and he won't have a chance to relive the worst ones if Chirrut has anything to say about it. “My name is Chirrut. What about you?”

A pause as Bodhi sizes him up, wonders if Chirrut is going to hurt him. He's always been wary, then. “Bodhi,” he finally says.

“Well, Bodhi, if you ever want to know what we were guarding, you can always come back.”

“Maybe,” says Bodhi, and then there's the sound of running feet as he disappears, a distracted child off to do something he suddenly considers to be of great importance.

After a moment, Chirrut goes inside. It's quiet, Baze done in the kitchen, and it doesn't take him long to find Baze, in the tiny house. They're contrary old men, and they'll get grumpy with Jyn around, but then again, Saw Gerrera believes that they're willing to do him some favors in exchange for his protection of some of niJedha's more powerless citizens.

“He's a good boy. Too thin.”

Like all Jedha's children. Try as he might, Chirrut hasn't yet thought of a way for the city to survive. Maybe Baze has, but as the months pass, they talk less about the life they lived before. That doesn't mean they don't think about it, so Chirrut can't say what he wants to, that they could keep Bodhi away from the Imperial Academy and Galen Erso. He already knows that as much as they change, they can't change too much. Changing too much means changing the story beyond their knowledge and control. “Well, we'll feed him,” he says instead.

Baze snorts. “I'll feed him, you mean. You can't even walk through the kitchen without causing trouble.”

“I never cause trouble.”

“You cause trouble everywhere you go,” says Baze, and between one thing and another, Chirrut puts the problem of Bodhi off for another day.

*

It's nearly two years into their new life before Chirrut gets his chance to find the Rebellion. Saw trusts them, as much as Saw trusts anyone, and the fractures are already beginning with the tiny, disorganized, less militant Rebellion, the one run by politicians. When Saw has some weapons he's begrudgingly going to sell them and complains that he needs to be home to keep an eye on the kyber harvesting program, Chirrut says that he'll go and makes up a holy site he could be making a pilgrimage to.

“You're lucky Saw is religious enough to trust Guardians a little but not religious enough to know the holy sites,” Baze grumbles while Chirrut packs. “You're sure you don't want me along?”

“No one's going to give me any trouble. I'm a humble blind monk with a box of moonshine my brothers have made, which is why I'm giving bribes to avoid scans.” Baze grumbles, but it's a good plan. They should have used it the first time around, if they ever needed to smuggle things. There are even a few bottles of his supposed cargo on the top, in case he needs to bribe with them or really convince someone. “You keep working on Saw. He likes you.”

“He's just annoyed by you so he'd rather talk to me.”

“Good. Keep talking to him, then. And don't annoy him.”

“Chirrut ...” Baze stops, and Chirrut waits. Baze doesn't waste words. If he started talking, he has something to say. He just needs a way to say it. “Be careful,” he finally says. “We make changes, we don't know what comes of them. If this is how you die in this new world, I don't think we get to do it again.”

Two years, and Chirrut still doesn't know how Baze died, how long it took. If he saw Chirrut die. Not knowing is its own kind of answer, though. “The Force is with me,” says Chirrut. “If I die, then the Force knows that we've changed enough to do what it wills of us. But I think it needs me alive.”

“I don't think the Force thinks like that,” says Baze, but he kisses Chirrut and shoves him out the door in the end, so Chirrut trusts him to deal with his worry. They have to trust each other, if they want to get through this, and he's always trusted Baze more than anyone else.

*

The operative he meets is no one he knows. Of course it is. Cassian is too young to be with the Rebellion in any kind of active capacity, only a few years older than Bodhi at the most. The others who went with them to Scarif were younger too. The Rebellion is barely more than a few people desperate enough to try to reverse what happened two years ago. Chirrut can almost understand Saw's frustrations with them, with twenty years of knowing that it can't be undone, only moved on from, behind him. The operative seems like he might hope that a vote in the Senate might fix what's too broken to be fixed.

Chirrut feels more like he's recruiting the operative, who doesn't give his name, than the opposite, but he lets himself be recruited anyway. He expresses doubts about Saw's methods in the long-term, trying to look as pious and monk-like as possible, but says that Saw is keeping Jedha's people as safe as he can, so he has an excuse to work both sides.

It's good that most people off Jedha don't know anything about the Guardians of the Whills now that the Jedi are gone, because the operative actually believes the pious monk act, and asks if Chirrut will be back again, if he has any off-world connections they should know about.

Chirrut makes up a few pilgrimage sites, gives the operative a way to contact him without contacting Saw, and goes home.

“You were gone,” Bodhi accuses before Chirrut can walk through his own front door. “I was going to ask you about what you were guarding.”

When Bodhi is old enough to keep a secret, Chirrut might tell him, as a kind of failsafe, where some of the treasures they saved from the temple this time are. He still has to go to the Academy, still has to meet Galen Erso and hear a message, but if he feels like Chirrut and Baze trust him, he'll trust them too. “I had friends to visit. You can ask me now if you make yourself useful and carry an old man's bag.”

“You're not that old,” Bodhi says, dubious, which Chirrut still sometimes forgets. He doesn't have the respect that gray hairs can get him now.

“Then I guess you don't need to hear about the Whills,” says Chirrut instead of saying anything about the youth of today.

A second later, there's a hand tugging at his bag, and Chirrut surrenders it. “What's a Whill?” Bodhi asks, almost tripping Chirrut trying to precede him through the front door, and Chirrut laughs.

Baze meets them just inside the door with an exasperated huff. “You just make it home and you bring back a stray?”

There's a thump as Chirrut's bag hits the floor. “Sorry, Mr. Malbus, I can—”

“You're not a problem, Bodhi,” says Baze. “Come on, Chirrut, I'll ask you about your trip later, it sounds like you two have a lot to talk about.”

Baze is limping a little in a way that means that placating Saw Gerrera probably meant him seeing some action, but Chirrut decides to take him at his word. If Baze thought that whatever it is was urgent, he would have no trouble sending Bodhi away.

Bodhi stays more than an hour peppering them with questions until his mother calls for him in the street, impatient, and he scampers off with barely a word, leaving Baze and Chirrut in silence.

“They're ready to trust us. Or that operative was stupid. Cassian and K-2 wouldn't be impressed,” Chirrut finally says. “Saw?”

“Not as ready,” Baze admits, but he sounds smug when he continues. “Likes me better than you. I told you.”

“You did,” Chirrut agrees, and they sit together for a while in silence, because there's not much else to say, and the next eighteen years are going to be busy ones. They can relax while they still have the time.

*

Chirrut goes off-world three more times for Saw before the Rebellion asks him to do something on his own.

“They trust me,” he carols when he gets the message, and Baze just grunts at him. Chirrut sighs, exasperated. “This is what we want, right? Saw likes you and thinks we're soft hearts who know things about children thanks to Bodhi, the Rebellion thinks I'm useful and is starting to build contact with me, so in five years, it will all start working out. Right?”

“Sometimes I think the changes might be too big,” says Baze.

Chirrut shakes his head. “No. Bodhi will still go to the Academy—you're the one who keeps telling him how fun it is to fly, like you've flown anything in your life—”

“What do you think I'm doing with Saw, picking flowers?”

“—and Jyn's father is still going to be taken, so she's still going to come here, and Cassian and K-2 will still find her and us someday. The plans are still going to be on Scarif.” Chirrut sighs, but he doesn't see a way around it. “Cassian will still probably try to kill Jyn's father. We'll see how much the Rebellion trusts us by then.”

“What happens when you tell them you have Galen Erso's daughter, after years of not doing it?”

That's part of the plan Chirrut hasn't worked out yet, but he waves a hand, ignoring that. “We have years to worry about that, and plenty of things that could go wrong between now and then.”

“But you claim none of them will go wrong.”

Chirrut spreads his hands. “We woke up on the first day of the Empire for a reason. And I don't want to live these twenty years a third time, so we'd better get it right now.”

Baze doesn't sound convinced, but he doesn't grumble when Chirrut leaves the next day, and he doesn't grumble two weeks later, when Chirrut comes home angry and tired and wishing he wasn't seeing the whole galaxy's problems. Instead, he invites Bodhi and his family for dinner, and Chirrut talks about the pilgrimage he was supposedly on, and Bodhi talks about school, and Chirrut pretends it's his first time around.

Sometimes, though he'd never say it to Baze, he wonders if he's changing things just so he has some new memories, so he's not reliving the same twenty years he did before.

*

It's another two years before Chirrut meets anyone more important to the Rebellion than a low-level operative, rarely the same one twice. Sometimes he wonders if they die or get promoted or if they just don't want to get too predictable, but those are questions he probably doesn't want answers to. When he goes to a meeting in an old temple and hears Mon Mothma's voice, he has to admit that he's surprised.

“Forgive me,” he says when she's greeted him, “but I don't think you're quite the same as the usual people I meet on these humble pilgrimages of mine.”

“And I don't think you're the usual kind of monk. You've been working with us for a while now, and with Saw Gerrera too. I think you know he won't remain on good terms with us for much longer.”

The Rebellion will be desperate enough to overlook his shortcomings for a few more years, or at least they were the first time. Maybe Chirrut is too good an operative, if they're trying to get around Saw using him. “Jedha is my home,” he says firmly, “and while I enjoy my trips off-world, I must go back. I have a husband, and I have the last treasures of the Whills.”

There's a sharp intake of breath. He thought she might like that. “We could keep your treasures safe. And your husband would be welcome. But I understand. I just want to know that we can count on you if we need to.”

In the past and in the future, she doesn't trust him, if she even knows who he is. She knows who Jyn and Cassian are, and doesn't trust them enough to listen to them, and she's part of the reason, if not a large part, that they all died. But that's years from now, and years ago, and never. Maybe Chirrut can make her trust him now. “Saw keeps people safe for us. I'm not going to spy, I won't work against him directly … but I think you know by now that you can call me.”

“I think we can.” She puts something on the bench beside him. “Secure comm. We're gaining traction, as much as we can. That means we have the scrubbed technology to be in touch if we need to be. Only use it if there's an emergency.”

It will be many years before the emergency comes to Jedha, but Mon Mothma is a reminder that it's going to come. This time, Chirrut will be complicit in its coming, because he could stop Bodhi from leaving and coming back, but then the Empire will have its planet-killer and the Rebellion will be gone, and Jedha is the sacrifice. “If there's an emergency, will you come?” he asks.

She thinks about it. Chirrut appreciates that. “If we can,” she says, and he appreciates the honesty, even if he feels niJedha turned to dust again around him. It's still the part of the story he's least sure of.

“Then I'll help you when I can,” he says.

The Rebellion can't afford to ask people to give up their whole lives to it. People will. People already do. But most of the people who help them only do it sometimes, try to maintain some kind of balance so they'll still have a life if it all ends. Mon Mothma isn't happy with that answer, but she'll accept it. She was a politician once. She knows what compromise is. “You want to help the Alliance,” she finally says, “but I don't think you trust me. None of my operatives have mentioned you being antagonistic, so I'm curious.”

“Call it … a feeling. I'll still work with your Alliance, don't worry. Nothing else matters.”

“I suppose not.” She stands up, the sweep of fabric billowing around her. “It was interesting meeting you, Chirrut. I hope we'll someday meet again.”

“We will,” he says, and then adds in an unnecessary piece of theater: “I see it in the Force.”

There's a pause. “I certainly hope so,” she finally says, and walks away.

*

“I met Mon Mothma,” he tells Baze at home, once he's been properly greeted and shooed Bodhi away. Bodhi has a very impressive ability to show up the moment Chirrut gets back to niJedha, always full of questions about where he's been. He's starting to be old enough that Chirrut lets the occasional hint slip.

“How did that go?”

Chirrut ponders that. “I don't trust her, and I think she could tell. But it's still early for the Rebels. A lot of them probably still wonder if they're going to betray each other. No harm done, probably.”

“She'll need to trust us someday,” Baze points out.

“And so will Saw. How's it going with him? Seems like a lot of Imperial supply transports get damaged whenever I'm away. Someone's going to notice that.”

A rustle of fabric as Baze shrugs. “I do what I have to do, just like you do. They trust us as much as they can trust us. In a few more years, we'll see if it's enough.”

That's probably enough of that. If they dwell too much on the future that's the past but probably won't be the future again, both of them get testy. And sad. Chirrut moves to a much easier topic. “How's Bodhi?” Chirrut asks, finally getting his bag put down. He's got a proud collection of tourist relics now, nothing real, nothing meaningful, but necessary. And funny, because Baze complains about them every time. He needs his small joys, after all, while dealing with all of this.

“Young,” says Baze after a long silence.

Chirrut turns to him. “Him and Jyn. This is for them. I know you don't like to lie, but you think he'd believe us?”

“No,” says Baze, grudging, and changes the subject.

*

Chirrut doesn't meet Mon Mothma again, but he meets plenty of other Rebel operatives. Saw tolerates him, and is maybe even a little grateful that Chirrut's help buys goodwill for Jedha and Saw from the Alliance, and is even more grateful that when Chirrut is gone, Baze will help him. He trusts that they're against the Empire, and are smart enough to stay safe and dangerous enough that they don't always have to be smart.

“How will we fix it if Saw doesn't trust us enough?” Baze asks one day, when Bodhi has spent three days with them, only running down the street to his mother to make sure he doesn't miss her cooking, which after these years is still better than Baze's and far better than Chirrut's. “If he keeps Jyn?”

“Then you work with her until she likes you, and before Saw leaves her, you tell her how to get in touch with us. I'd do it, but Saw wouldn't trust me that far.”

“You think he'd be happy to see her show up on his planet again after he leaves her?”

Chirrut thinks that after they have Jyn, what Saw thinks is secondary at best, but that's crueler than he wants to be. Baze knows it too, but maybe he's looking for a less cruel answer as well. “As long as Bodhi knows where to find us, we can leave,” he offers. It's a wrench even thinking about leaving the relics that can't leave Jedha, the remnants of his faith, the home he's lived in for so long. “And as long as Jyn trusts us enough to let us find her.”

“She'll trust us,” says Baze. “Bodhi doesn't remember, but I don't think that he would have trusted us the first time. Maybe something lingered.”

And if it's true of Bodhi, and Jyn, then maybe it will be true of Cassian Andor and K-2 and the small group that dared come to Scarif with them and died with them. Maybe that will be enough to change things, though Chirrut won't trust that. “Well!” he says, a little lighter. He and Baze both like to have time to think about things. “I'm glad it only took irrefutable proof of the Force to make you start thinking like a Guardian.”

“The only thing I ever guard is you, from yourself,” Baze grumbles. A moment later, he taps his foot against Chirrut's. He likes reassurance after he thinks about dying. Or, more likely, after he thinks about Chirrut dying. There's a minute of Baze's first life that Chirrut has never learned more about and that he doesn't want to ask about. Maybe he'll find out someday, and maybe he won't.

“Bodhi's going to be jealous when we start splitting our attention,” says Chirrut, not quite sure he believes it but knowing Baze has fond memories of his own sister, from long ago, and knowing it will turn his grumbles happier and make him speculate about how to best make sure they get along.

*

They get impatient. Or at least Chirrut is, and from the amount of musing out loud Baze does about when exactly Jyn lost her parents and came to Jedha even though both of them know she never said exactly, he is too. Every time Chirrut leaves for a mission for the Alliance, making a delivery, being part of a long relay of a message or data, or occasionally using the fighting skills they've finally realized he has, he wonders if he'll come back to news, and every time the answer is no, he gets disappointed. Even Bodhi asks what's going on, after a few times almost catching them speculating about it, but they're more careful after that.

When Jyn does come, it's a surprise. Chirrut comes home from delivering a message (the Alliance loves having a blind messenger, they know he won't peek), and Bodhi isn't waiting for him, just Baze, sitting at the table.

“What's wrong now?” Chirrut asks, wary.

“There was a new recruit when I went to help Saw. A child.” Chirrut winces at the way Baze grinds the words out. “She can't have been with him more than weeks, and he already put a blaster in her hands. We need to get her out.”

“We've been preparing for this,” says Chirrut, but they've never known exactly how Jyn came to Saw, and exactly how they would mention the subject of taking care of her. “You talk to Saw, tell him to talk to me if he's worried, ask if we can talk to Jyn.”

Baze snorts. “You think talking to you will make him less worried?”

Chirrut sits across the table from Baze. “If he were worried about her safety, he wouldn't be putting her in fights already. If he wants to know she'll be protected … he doesn't like me, but he knows I can fight. And he knows you can fight. Talk to him. Did you talk to her already?”

“Yes. Told her my name and that I live in the city, and that I could help if she wanted.” A rustle of cloth, Baze shrugging. “She didn't, or she wouldn't admit it. But she knows who I am.”

Chirrut nods. “So you and Saw will talk, and Saw and I will talk, and maybe Jyn will talk to us, and we'll do our best. If nothing else, we'll make sure she knows we're safe people to come to, and safe people to call, when she needs us.”

They don't know exactly what Saw will do with her, but they know that they aren't together for as long as they should be, and that Jyn didn't act like someone who trusted that someone would be there for her. She needs to be able to trust—she learned it with them, with Cassian and K-2 and Bodhi, quicker than she could have, but it would be better for her and for everyone if it was easier for her. It would be better if Cassian trusted too, but that, they can't control, unless Chirrut has the luck to meet him on one of his missions someday.

“We need to be careful how we raise her,” says Baze. “We want to give her a good life, but she still needs to know what she needs to know.”

It's a relief hearing that from Baze's mouth as well as his own knowledge. If he were given the choice, if the galaxy wasn't as big as it is, maybe he would save Jyn and Bodhi from what's coming. He'd tell Bodhi to leave the planet but not to be a pilot, and he'd take Jyn to the Outer Rim and let her grow up where nobody would find her. But Galen Erso is still making a planet-killer, and he needs them both.

“She may be a child, but I think she already wants to fight. She's already seen enough that keeping her out of the battle wouldn't be easy if we wanted to. All we can do is be with her, and teach her,” says Chirrut, and thinks of Bodhi. “Probably Bodhi should learn some staff work too. Can't hurt.”

“Can't hurt,” Baze agrees. “I'll talk to Saw, and we'll make a plan from there.”

Bodhi shows up not ten minutes later, claiming Baze sent him on an errand that could have waited and now he's missed Chirrut's return, and Chirrut laughs and tells him everything he can about his mission and implies a few other things and lets himself enjoy it even though everything seems very real now, not just a ghost of a previous life but true changes. A new beginning.

*

Baze goes out to see Saw Gerrera without being summoned, always chancy, and Saw himself comes back. “I asked Baze to wait,” says Saw, walking past Chirrut as soon as he opens the door. “It's been a while since we talked.”

“It has,” Chirrut agrees. “I know we like it better that way, but it seems like maybe we have a few things to talk about.”

“He wants the child.” Someday, Saw is going to have trouble speaking without gasping. Right now, he's still younger and stronger than he was then, but he's still been fighting most of his life. First the Republic, now the Empire. In this life, when he's been forced to step away from his position as a Guardian, Chirrut understands him more, but that just makes him want to keep more distance. “Why? Why should I give her to you?”

He knows why Saw will leave her, but right now, he wants to protect her and keep her close. He loves her, in his way. So does Chirrut, but Saw won't know why, and won't understand if he's told. “Someday, someone's going to ask who she is, and why you're keeping her so close.”

“You know,” says Saw, not a question, and Chirrut hears the click of a weapon changing settings. “How? Who told you?”

“The Force,” says Chirrut. It's true enough.

There's a silence. Chirrut knows there's a weapon trained on him, but Saw isn't shooting it yet. He's just thinking. “I knew Jedi, and they knew more about the Force than you, Guardian. They still couldn't see things like that.”

“No,” Chirrut agrees. “But I still know it. And I wouldn't tell, because her family isn't her fault, but a few years of guesses and someone might get close. What would you do then?”

“Keep her safe.”

By leaving her, and hurting her. “You still could,” he says instead. “If you keep her around, people are going to wonder why you took her in when you haven't the hundreds of other orphans you've met. But give her to a few old monks who can look after her, visit her when you can … they won't care about her. Nobody will. And if they do, you know Baze and I can protect her and get her away.”

Another click, and then the sound of the weapon lowering. “There's something you're not telling me.”

Chirrut hasn't told anyone the truth of the life he and Baze are living. Baze already knows, and most people don't need to, and the last few will be happier not knowing. But Saw, he knew Jedi. More Jedi than Chirrut did, when the Temple of the Whills was an unfashionable place in those last few years of the Republic. “Call it a dream the Force sent,” he says. “Jyn is important. Things are going to get worse than they are now, but she'll help. And she'll help better if there's no danger of anyone recognizing her with you.”

“Why should I trust you?”

He shouldn't. Chirrut still hasn't figured out how to save niJedha and Saw. Maybe Saw he can save by finding him a mission he would take. For Jyn's sake, since in this life, he won't have abandoned her on her own, just found her a better home. “I'd be surprised if you did,” he says. “And maybe offended on Jyn's behalf. I don't want to hurt her, and I don't want to give her to anyone who would.”

“You're friendly with the Rebel Alliance, and they would want her if they knew who she was, and what her father has been taken to do.”

Chirrut tilts his head. “What has her father been taken to do, then?” If Saw knew this early and didn't tell, that doesn't speak well of him.

An impatient noise. “Something he'd rather not be doing, something his wife would have hated him doing. That's what matters. That, and that anyone who knows who he is and finds Jyn is going to have a very good hostage. So why should I believe you won't tell the Alliance they have a hostage?”

Someday, he will. Maybe even Jyn will. For now, though, he can tell the truth. “She's a child. I want children to be safe—from anyone. From the Empire, from the Alliance, and from going on missions. Probably I'll stay home a while. I've been needing a break anyway.”

“I don't trust this,” says Saw. “But you're right that she could be safer with someone else than she is with me.” There's a pause. “I'll ask her. See if she wants to meet you.”

It's better than Chirrut has a right to expect, but he knows Saw isn't as bitter yet as he might one day get. Or maybe, without having Jyn so close and then forcing himself to leave her, he'll save a little bit of bitterness. “Let me know,” he says.

A minute later, Saw is gone.

*

Three days later, Chirrut meets Jyn again. Baze is at his back, and she's with Saw, the four of them meeting outside the city walls, near some ruins that so recently were part of Jedha's history.

“I met you before,” she says clearly when the adults around her have all exchanged wary greetings. For a moment, Chirrut thinks she remembers, as a dream of some kind, and then he remembers that she's met Baze. “Saw says you might want to take me in and might want me as a hostage.”

Saw hisses—walls have ears—and beside Chirrut, Baze crouches. He's always been better with children than Chirrut has. “Just to take you in. But he's right to worry. Some people would want that.”

“Why don't you?”

If Chirrut is counting right, it's maybe been a month or two since her mother died, since her father was taken, but she's not shaky or frightened or crying at the thought of more change. He thought she hardened as she got older, but maybe she's always had the steel in her. Good. She'll need it. He goes to one knee next to Baze. It's just starting to twinge again to do that. He'll miss having good knees. “We think children should get to be children. There's a boy down the street you could meet, if you wanted a friend. And we'll teach you to fight so if anyone comes to take you hostage, you can take care of them.” Chirrut considers the matter. “And us, if we're the ones who give you up.”

“I want to fight,” she says.

“You will.” And, to be fair: “With us or with Saw.”

“But we'll protect you,” says Baze, with a sharp elbow in Chirrut's side. “We know how, and we don't work as much as Saw does. But it's your choice, Jyn.”

There's a silence while Jyn inspects them, and Chirrut doesn't fill it even though he wants to. “My parents told me to stay with Saw,” she says.

“They knew he'd keep you safe himself, or find somewhere safe to be,” says Baze, doing a better job of eliding the truth than Chirrut usually manages. “It's up to you. And you can change your mind—come to us in a year, in ten. Or come to us and leave in a year, or ten.”

“I don't know,” she says, on the edge of tears.

“Or you can split your time,” Baze continues, and he can hear that catch her attention. “Stay with Saw sometimes, and us sometimes. While he does what he needs to do and you might be in danger, for instance.” That's more for Saw's benefit than Jyn's, but it's not a bad idea either. Chirrut is attached to his vision for the future, hates making compromises, but Baze can and will, and he makes smart ones.

There's silence. Probably Jyn is looking at Saw, or at Baze. Or maybe at Chirrut, how's he supposed to know? If she's this wary, this early, Chirrut has to admit that Galen Erso or his wife were smarter than he gave them credit for before.

“I'll think about it,” she finally says, and at least it's a beginning. Maybe it's Baze, maybe she's smart, or maybe part of her remembers that they were friends once, and that they can help her. Maybe it's all three.

“We'll look forward to hearing the results of your thinking,” says Chirrut, as seriously as he can manage, and tries not to groan his way to standing.

*

“It's just a few days while Saw is off-world,” Jyn says a week later as she puts her bag down in their hallway. She's alone, of course, and somehow found her way to them anyway. Hopefully Saw knows where she is, or he's going to stab Chirrut for kidnapping her even though he had nothing to do with it.

“That's fine,” says Baze. “We'll make some extra dinner for you. Look around all you want.”

She does. Chirrut listens as she finds every window, every door, every hiding spot, not that it takes very long. They're not wealthy men. When she comes back, though, it's with something clutched in her hand that she shoves under his nose. Chirrut takes it from her and feels it, and she's very clever, because that was in the best hiding place they have inside there house, only to be touched or even thought of if they need to go on the run quickly. “I have a necklace like that,” she says, accusing. “My mother gave it to me. She said it's special. Why do you have one too?”

The first time, he indulged the temptation to be mysterious when talking about her kyber crystal. “And you should keep it safe where no one can see it,” he says. “Kyber crystals. Some people call them Jedi relics, but they were always more than that. The Jedi and the Force aren't the same thing.”

“Tell me about them,” she says.

It's a promising start, so Chirrut does, reminding her not to talk about it with anyone but them and Saw and then putting it away in a pocket when Baze tells them dinner is ready, to be returned to a more secure hiding place later.

Bodhi comes running through the door when they're halfway through dinner. “I could smell something good and you never cook, so I thought I'd—wait, who's she?”

“She's a guest,” says Chirrut. “Jyn, this is Bodhi. He is a scamp who only cares about us for our stew.”

“Hey!” says Bodhi.

To everyone's surprise, maybe even her own, Jyn laughs. It's only a little giggle, but it's already a good change. Baze sounds like he's smiling when he replies. “Sit down, Bodhi, there's enough for you too. Jyn hasn't been in niJedha long, you'll have to tell her about all the best things to do that two old men don't know about.”

Four of them over dinner makes them feel like a family in a way Chirrut hasn't experienced since he was so young he barely remembers it. Jyn and Bodhi, after a few minutes of wariness, take to each other, and eat more stew than seems possible for two children before going running out in the street to make some kind of trouble. It's good, being almost all together again, missing Cassian and K-2 but closer than they've been yet, but Jyn's childish peals of laughter as Bodhi chases her around and Bodhi's strange noises—he seems to be pretending to be an AT-AT—remind him that they're still children. They have a while to wait, and then they can test what's going to become of them.

“Just enjoy it,” says Baze with a sigh when he catches Chirrut with his head tilted, listening. “They're still young. Let them act like it.”

Chirrut does, and takes Jyn's side about whether or not she needs a bath in the fresher when she comes back inside apparently filthy according to Baze, and he keeps a hold on the kyber crystal in his pocket, wondering what the Force intends.

*

Jyn's first visit is only three days, but her next is a week, and the one after that even longer, until she's with them more than she's with Saw, and until Saw encourages her to come to them when there's even a chance of action. She comes more for Bodhi than for them, Chirrut suspects, at least at first, but it's not bad for them to be friends. She's impressed by a child three years older who knows all the secret ways through niJedha's streets, and Bodhi is just happy to have someone around who thinks he's impressive.

When Bodhi isn't around, though, Chirrut and Baze teach her. Mostly, they teach her how to fight. Baze teaches her how to aim blaster shots and fight with weapons. Chirrut teaches her how to keep her balance, and how to kick and scratch and bite if it keeps her free. It won't be the soldier's training she had the first time, or whatever she learned after Saw left her, but she'll know how to handle herself.

Chirrut goes to another off-world mission to carry another message from one nameless operative to another, on a pilgrimage, and comes home to find Jyn in his house again. “I came and you weren't here,” she complains. “You were going to tell me more of your stories.”

“Sometimes I have to go. And sometime Baze helps Saw—”

“Not as long as she's in the house, I'm told,” says Baze from where he's cleaning one of his weapons, wry but not unhappy. “He says I'm the responsible one but you should leave as much as you want.”

“I've done nothing to deserve this,” says Chirrut, mildly offended, and turns back to Jyn. “I have to leave, to help people. You know what Saw does? It's part of something bigger. And I help when I can. But you can't tell anyone, not even Bodhi.”

“You're fighting the Empire,” she says in a whisper. “Like my father wanted to do. Like Saw does.”

Chirrut shrugs. “I carry messages. Not much more than that. But we try, Baze and I. The Force is a holy thing. We don't like what the Empire does with it.”

“Chirrut,” says Baze, sharp.

Jyn needs to know and trust the Rebels even more than Bodhi does, but she's still young. Even if Chirrut is impatient, she's too young to know much yet. They're trying to raise her to be less frightened and wary, not more so. “You'll learn more someday,” Chirrut promises her when she makes an offended noise. “But we shouldn't talk about it here in the city walls.”

She sulks about it, but not ten minutes later Bodhi comes running in to say there's a man swallowing fire a street away and then blowing it out again, and she seems to forget all about it as she runs off.

“I know she's young,” Chirrut says when they're gone, before Baze can start. “But even here, even when we're trying—her mother is already dead, her father is already gone. We can't protect her from everything, and we shouldn't try.”

“But we can want to.”

“Yes,” says Chirrut, and thinks of the way Jyn so easily learned to grab his arm when she wants his attention, and how frequently he gets to hear her laugh. “We can want to.”

*

Jyn goes on her first active mission with Saw when she's twelve. They've saved her a few years, anyway, and she insists on this one, because Saw told her about a woman who's involved and she already wants to meet her. Baze goes with her, insists on it, and when the mission parameters get expanded, they're gone for two weeks, and Chirrut is stuck on Jedha, pacing with worry with no mission of his own to keep him occupied.

Bodhi shows up regularly, asking if they're home yet and eating Chirrut's cooking without complaining too much that it isn't as good as Baze's, and he gets quieter as the time passes, until it's been a week and a half and he sits over dinner and heaves a sigh and puts down his spoon before he's even half finished. “You let Jyn go, but you never even mention it to me,” he says, and he sounds hurt.

Chirrut puts down his own spoon. “I don't let Jyn do anything.” That's a start, but he's not ready for this conversation, not yet. They have nine years before it's time, and he doesn't know what happens if it all happens early. Bodhi and Jyn are still supposed to be children. But Bodhi, a little less malnourished now than he was the first time, thanks to Baze's cooking, has shot up tall in the past year, voice getting deeper. He's paying more attention to the lessons in fighting, and running wild a little less. He's making money running errands, and buying food instead of fun. He's thinking like a man. “She wouldn't ask permission, so there's no point in it. Do you want to go?”

“I'm not stupid.” Bodhi's chair creaks when he fidgets around in it. “I know you and Baze … I mean, I've guessed. What you do when you go away.”

“There are so many pilgrimages to try.” It's too much of a joke for this conversation, but he has to try it anyway. Just like he has to try the more serious words that come next. “Jyn didn't get to choose. Not really. And this isn't the kind of thing you ask about. Not with the Imperial presence here.”

“I think about it.” Chirrut lets this silence lengthen, because he doesn't know what to say next. He just has to wait for Bodhi. “But I can't do it. My mother … I need to do something where I can send money home. Try to give her an easy life. Not worry that I'm going to starve or get thrown into prison or something else horrible.”

“Not everyone can do it. Not even when they want to.” Chirrut takes a few more bites of dinner. “Just know what you're willing to do, for how long, and how to get out if you need to get out.”

Bodhi eats a little himself. “The best money that's out there, for people like me—it's the Flight Academy. The army if I can't take the Academy, but I think I can. But … I don't know if I should.”

He has to, and suddenly it breaks Chirrut's heart thinking about it. Just because Bodhi might have an easier life, no Bor Gullet, no mistrust from Saw or, he hopes, the Rebels, it doesn't mean this choice will be easy. It might even be harder. “You should do what you must to survive. And if it ever gets to be too much, we're always waiting.”

“Jyn might not forgive me.”

“She might be angry. But she knows that sometimes people have to do things they don't want to do, in this world.”

Bodhi stops toying with his spoon and starts eating with it again. “There's a few more years before I could join, anyway. Maybe I'll think of something else.”

“Maybe you will,” says Chirrut, and it's still nine years away, but the past dozen years have passed quickly. The future is coming their way, and he still doesn't know everything he can do.

Bodhi changes the subject, and Chirrut lets him, and a few days later Baze and Jyn come back, and it's years before Bodhi mentions the Flight Academy again.

*

Jyn goes on more missions, sometimes following Baze and sometimes Baze following her. She complains that Chirrut won't take her off-world, but Chirrut isn't ready to explain her to the Rebel Alliance. She has false papers that make Jyn into a nickname and have nothing to do with Erso at all, but they're smart. They would look into her, and they would figure her out. Chirrut tells her so, when she's fourteen and wheedles a little too much, and she goes to stay with Saw for a month right before he leaves Jedha, no time for Baze to go with her, and comes back with nightmares.

They can't protect her from everything. She can make her own choices.

“You keep saying that,” says Baze one night when they're sitting up in bed, wondering if they should wake her. She's quiet enough that the neighbors don't complain, but Chirrut and Baze sleep lightly, after so long in danger, in two lives. “It's true. Do you not believe it?”

“Maybe I just wish it weren't true.”

Baze sighs. He hasn't talked much about the mission either. Saw is getting more extreme. They can't do anything about that, Chirrut suspects. It's what happens when a man has lived a life like Saw's. “We'll teach her more,” he says. “Better. Bodhi too.”

“He mentioned the Flight Academy again. A year and he'll be old enough to sign up.”

“Then he and Jyn should definitely spar. You and me too. We can't get soft. We need to survive this too, not just them.”

It's been so long since Chirrut thought about his own death. Sometimes, it's almost a good memory, in context: the middle of their story, not the end. Baze murmuring above him, trying to give him comfort. He hopes someone tried to give some to Baze, but he's not sure there was the time for that. It's a conversation they still haven't had.

“You know I like sparring,” he says, as serene as he can be.

Jyn makes another noise. She slept a few times in their presence that first time, on the way to and from Eadu, on the way to Scarif. She got over crying out in her sleep.

“We'll have to tell her about her father. Let her make her own choice about whether she wants to go to the Rebels. I don't think it's the right choice, and some things we shouldn't know so she can't know, but she deserves to know as much as we can tell her.”

Baze is quiet so long that Chirrut thinks he's fallen asleep again. “She does,” he finally says, and Jyn's sleep seems to have quieted enough that after that, they both manage to fall asleep.

*

Usually, Chirrut isn't ashamed to admit that he leaves the more serious parts of caring for children to Baze. Jyn likes him better, trusts him more, however much she likes spending time with Chirrut, and Chirrut doesn't think he's a very comforting person anyway. Even Bodhi, who adores Chirrut, goes to talk to Baze often enough if someone has broken his heart or his mother is ill.

It's a surprise when Jyn comes to him, then, not two days after his conversation with Baze. “You said the Rebels would make me a hostage because of my father,” she says, accusatory. “What do you know about my father?”

Probably Baze sent her. Chirrut is going to cook every meal for a week as a present for Baze just to make him miserable. “That he's a very good scientist and that the Empire thinks he's smart enough to take him by force.”

“Probably for the military,” she says. Of course she's been thinking about it. Any girl would. “The man who—the man who took him seemed military.”

“It would make sense.” It's going to kill her to find out just what they're making him do. It must have killed her the first time. “Which means he's even more important. So if people want him to do something—to work harder, or to stop working—they're going to want to have you. They're going to want to show a picture to your father and say that if he doesn't do what they want, you'll die.”

“I can defend myself.”

“You can. And Baze and I can defend you here, and in some other places. But you're a very good hostage. Eventually they'll send more people than we can take on, if they find out who you are.”

“Even the Rebels?” she asks in a small voice. “You're friends with them. Like their methods more than you like Saw's. But they'd do that to me too?”

Chirrut misses Cassian, even though he barely remembers what he sounded like. Cassian, if she could understand him, might help her understand this. He was willing to do terrible things if they seemed necessary, but it hurt him to do them. “Yes. They wouldn't want to, but they would. Someday, if you want, I'll take you to them and we'll tell them everything and see what they do, but I'd recommend waiting a little while.”

“The Rebels are supposed to be better,” she whispers. He wonders again what she and Baze did on that last mission with Saw.

“They are. But they don't always get to be. They're still fighting for the right thing. They make sacrifices, but they are sacrifices. The Empire doesn't care who they hurt, it's not a sacrifice to them. That makes a difference to me.”

Jyn is quiet for a while. “I'll think about it. And I'll stay out of their way while I do.”

It's all he can ask for, so Chirrut asks if she wants to spar, and she even gets a few hits in on him. They're making progress.

*

A year later, Jyn and Bodhi come into the house in the middle of an argument, interrupting the only private meal Baze and Chirrut have been able to have for weeks, since Jyn and Saw had a fight and she hasn't gone out except to make trouble with the other city kids ever since.

“What is it this time?” says Baze, with a sigh, because mostly they get along, but when they disagree, the whole neighborhood hears about it.

“He enlisted!” Jyn shouts, loud enough that if the neighbors didn't know before, they know now. “He's going to the Imperial Flight Academy!”

Chirrut takes a breath. This, somehow, feels like the start of it. He's known it's going to happen since the beginning. Bodhi has known it's going to happen for at least two years. It still feels sudden. “Congratulations, Bodhi,” he finally says. “You're happy?”

Bodhi sighs. He sounds miserable. Chirrut wonders if he was the first time too, or if Baze and Chirrut's obvious allegiances and Jyn's clear unhappiness are making it harder this time. “I have to do this. For my mother,” he says, and it sounds like he's said it at least three times already.

“You're a responsible son,” says Baze. “Here, it sounds like Chirrut already knows about this. You come with me and tell me all about it.”

“I can't believe—”

“You,” Baze continues, cutting Jyn off, “stay here and talk to Chirrut. He knows you're unhappy, and you're not helping.”

Chirrut makes a face at Baze for leaving him with the more difficult job, but he probably deserves it. “Jyn, make some tea,” he says, and as Baze and Bodhi withdraw to the street—the neighbors, if they've heard, will be happier for Bodhi than them, and it can cover up some of Baze's lack of enthusiasm. Jyn, once they're out of the house, stomps into the kitchen and starts the kettle boiling and stays there, presumably boiling herself while she's at it.

She doesn't come to join him until the tea is steeped. She gives him his unsweetened and he doesn't send her back for sugar. She has a right to be angry. “I don't know why you aren't upset,” she says, slamming her own cup down a lot harder than she did his.

“Because he's a boy who wants a better life, for himself and his family.”

Jyn lowers her voice until it's little more than an angry whisper. “We all do, but he's betraying—he knows you and Baze have sympathies at the very least, and he knows … he knows what the Empire did to my parents.”

That's interesting information. It's certainly a conversation that they never had the first time around. “Does he know your real name?” If he meets Galen Erso and knows exactly who he is and who his daughter is, that could be dangerous. Bodhi's not a good liar, and he'll tell Galen, and if Galen is freed early, he might not build his weakness into the planet killer.

“No. You and Saw both say the city has ears. Maybe I should—”

“You shouldn't. If he leaves now, it's desertion and all the time he would have spent in the Academy he'll spend in jail instead. And if he goes … well, you know Bodhi's a bad liar.”

She crosses her arms, mulish. “You could get him out and away, and I could give the Rooks money. I make some.”

She sounds like she's losing steam with every word, and Chirrut avoids sighing with relief. Jyn is stubborn, but she can see reason. “He's going. The question is if he leaves knowing you're still friends or not. He needs family to come home to. And I think you know that no matter what, Bodhi isn't going to be like the worst of them. Some people just have to survive.”

“Why can't he survive another way?”

“We're all going to miss him,” says Chirrut. “And you can be angry. But say goodbye before he goes, at least. And see him if you can when he comes back.”

“Maybe I'll start leaving Jedha with you when you go. You're old now, you could use an assistant to help you on your pilgrimages.”

“Remember that if you choose to try, they're going to start digging, and you're going to have to decide if you trust them enough to let them do that. And besides—Bodhi is older. He can decide the shape of his life. You still have to let us keep you safe, at least sometimes.”

“Don't you trust them, after so long?”

“Someday, I'll explain everything to you if I can. You may not believe me, but I'll tell you. And Bodhi, and any other friends we make along the way.” He and Baze owe them that, at least. They may not believe them, but they still have to say it all. “For now, all you have to know is that I'd say you should wait a while. Things could get dangerous.”

A swallow and a swallowed hiss, as she drinks her too-hot tea. “Things already are. And even more for Bodhi. And us. If I could help ...”

“You help, going on your missions with Saw. But keep an ear out for whispers, and ask Saw if he's hearing them too.”

“I hate that you know something I don't.”

Chirrut wants to say that he does too, but it's not true. If he didn't know, Jyn wouldn't be here with him at all, and she and Bodhi are the best parts of this new life, even when Chirrut is worried about them. “Remind Bodhi you're worried as much as you are angry, and you and I will have a good spar later.”

“I almost beat you last time, old man.”

Chirrut beams at the offer of peace. “Must have been having an off day.”

By the time Bodhi and Baze come back, talking about places Bodhi could fly to one day, Jyn is able to get up and hug Bodhi and tell him not to do anything stupid, and it's more than Chirrut was expecting this early, so he considers it a success.

*

Jedha seems a lot emptier with Bodhi gone. For the first six months, Chirrut, Baze, and Jyn are away from the city more often than they're not. Jyn sleeps at Saw's encampment like she hasn't done for more than a night or two in years, and she and Baze go on missions, and Chirrut lets it be known that his daughter is busy and he's a little more free than usual to run the Rebel Alliance's errands, and meets more operatives than ever before.

At the end of those six months, Chirrut is at a restaurant near a pilgrimage site, and he hears a familiar accent, a voice he knows even after almost sixteen years.

For a moment, he's almost sure that Cassian is going to walk up to his table and give him his message, but he's already deep in conversation with some stranger, glib and charming enough that it must be an informant, someone he's trying to manipulate. If he notices Chirrut, knows that his isn't the only Alliance job in this restaurant tonight, he doesn't let on. Chirrut wants to find an excuse to talk to him, to ask where K-2 is, to see if his life is different at all, but Cassian wouldn't trust him, then, and he'd like Cassian to trust him, and Jyn.

Getting the message from the operative bringing it to him, chatting about his grandchildren with a little more nervousness than Chirrut would like in public, is boring, but when Chirrut gets up to excuse himself, he has a little chance. The Rebels know he pretends to be clumsier than he is, that in case anyone is watching him, at least once he'll stumble and do something memorable. This time, he stumbles into Cassian's table.

It's Cassian's companion who responds. “Be careful, you drunk—ah, my apologies. You may want to make use of that cane of yours.”

No one he recognizes. Chirrut stumbles over himself to apologize for interrupting them and starts to walk away.

“You're okay?” Cassian asks. A little wary, a little sympathetic, and almost the same as before. He doesn't sound young, like Bodhi does. Maybe in any world, Cassian doesn't get the chance to be young.

“Yes, yes. I thought I remembered how to get to the door better than I did.” Chirrut offers his best good-natured shrug, and hopes it doesn't come off stiff. He and Cassian both read people well, in very different ways. It's a foolish self-indulgence to risk making Cassian mistrust him when they're getting so close, but he can't help it, so he'll just have to hope that it works out well. “Sorry, gentlemen.”

He wanders away from the table, using his staff this time, and after a few seconds, their conversation resumes, carefully innocuous.

At home, Baze is waiting, and Jyn is still away. “I met Cassian,” he says, relieved that he doesn't have to lie or put off telling the truth, when they've eaten something and sat down and carefully not discussed where Jyn is or the lonely messages they get from Bodhi, who's been taken off the fighter track and put on cargo at the Academy.

Baze grunts, surprised. “How did he seem?”

“Like himself. He wasn't my contact, so we didn't exactly talk.”

“K-2?”

“No. Would have been too conspicuous, where we were.”

There's a long silence as Baze thinks that over. Maybe he's thinking along the same lines Chirrut is, how six years isn't long in the scheme of things, how important it is that Cassian trusts them a little more easily the first time and how that's one change they can't control. Or maybe Baze is just missing having Jyn and Bodhi home, because the next thing he says is “When Jyn's back in town, we'll tell her to come to dinner. And maybe we should take a few weeks off from missions. I think we're all tired.”

They are. Chirrut is feeling the weight of years, the weight of twenty extra of them, and the hardest part, the part that could end it all again, is yet to come. “Jyn will call us old men,” he warns, but even that sounds nice.

“We are,” Baze observes, and changes the subject to the Imperial patrols around the city, which are getting stricter as Rebel operations everywhere are getting a little less subtle, now that they're finally big and connected enough to make big strikes.

*

“Saw says I can't come on missions anymore,” Jyn says when she comes home from a mission eight months later, spitting mad. She's been a little better, since Bodhi had his first leave at home from the Flight Academy and said dismally that he'll never be allowed to fly a fighter and make the higher level of pay, but she still insisted on going on a mission alone when Baze complained one time too many about his back hurting, and now there's this.

This isn't as bad as Saw taking her somewhere and abandoning her, but Chirrut won't tell her that. He wonders if Saw would have done it, if it weren't for Baze and Chirrut. Either he knows Jyn has somewhere safe to go or he knows they would have hunted her down to the ends of the galaxy and never forgiven Saw for it.

Baze pulls together an answer before Chirrut does, his tone bland. “Did you do something reckless?”

“No.” She sits down with a huff. Probably she wasn't as petulant in her first life, and probably it's a good thing that she is, but it's been a long time since Chirrut was a teenager. He's forgotten about the sulking.

“Did he tell you why?” Chirrut asks.

“No. So it probably has something to do with my parents.”

She's smart, and Chirrut wonders if she figured it out the first time too, or if she really did just think that Saw was tired of having a young girl around and left her. “It might,” says Baze, “which probably means he wants you to be safe.” Whatever reaction Jyn has, she doesn't verbalize it. All Chirrut can tell is that she's stiff and upset. “I'll ask him if he thinks it's safer for us to leave.”

“We can't,” she says. “Jedha is your home, and Bodhi's home, and … and mine.”

And Chirrut still hasn't figured out how to save it, except for Bodhi to come somewhere else when he defects. “I know,” he says. “But we want you to be safe too.”

“And I'm finally being useful,” she continues, switching tacks now that she's been reassured on one of them. “He sends me away when I'm finally useful, and I want to keep fighting.”

“Maybe,” says Baze, “it's time for Chirrut to introduce you to his side of the fight.”

“We don't need to worry about that right this second,” says Chirrut, frowning in Baze's direction, and changes the subject back to Jyn, and how her mission was, and whether she needs anything to eat. She seems like she'd rather talk about Baze's suggestion, but she's smart. She doesn't bring it up.

*

They wait until she's out of the house on an errand that will get her a few credits before they have a low-voiced argument about it. “The Alliance will ask just as many questions as Saw's people will,” Chirrut hisses almost as soon as she's out the door.

“I know that. But you've been making plans for almost twenty years. You don't think I have a few? If she works with them, if they know who she is, before it all becomes important ...”

Chirrut has thought of it a few times over the years, but he doesn't want to trust it, either. “And if they decide it's important now? If they decide to kill him now, and he never builds in his weakness?”

“You convince them not to, because they have a decade of trusting you behind them and they may be doing better than they were in the beginning, but they're not ready for a fight of that size yet.” Baze grabs Chirrut's hand. “I think it will help her and Bodhi, and that helps the rest of us.”

“I just want to be certain.”

“Nothing is certain. You should know that.” Baze squeezes, and Chirrut makes himself listen. He and Baze argue all the time, in little ways, and forgive each other just as easily, but about the big things, Baze has always tended to follow Chirrut's lead, grumbling or no. If he's disagreeing, it's for a reason. “They trust her, they make Scarif an official mission, maybe you don't die.”

More than a decade and a half, and now he chooses to talk about it. “And maybe you don't. How long was it?”

Baze sighs. “We've gone this long without talking about it.”

“Yes, and now you bring it up.”

“I remember it every day, seeing you die. I don't want to see it again, unless you're a hundred years old and in bed.”

Most days, Chirrut would make a joke about what he would be doing in bed at a hundred years old, but Baze is serious, and they only have a few years left. If there's a time to talk about it, it's now. “We've been trying all this time. But you could have talked to me about it before.”

“We thought Saw might keep her around, before.” Baze sighs. “You asked me how long it was. I don't know. A minute, a year.”

Chirrut tries very hard not to think about Baze dying, and what would have happened if he'd died first, on that beach. He can't blame Baze for wanting to avoid living it again, and if he thinks it could help, well. “Fine. I'll talk to Jyn about it, and then I'll talk to Mon Mothma if I can get in touch with her.” Because of course Jyn has no sense of self-preservation. She'll throw herself into this fight if Chirrut and Baze give her anything resembling permission, and maybe even if they don't.

“A few more years and it's over,” says Baze.

Chirrut can't decide which one of them he's reassuring. “And then we get to decide what to do next.” That's not very reassuring to him. It's been a little comforting, knowing the vague sketch of the future since his death. He tries again, something that does reassure him. “And so will they.”

If they succeed, if they live, there's a whole future to decide on. Will Bodhi and Jyn stay with the Rebellion, or live their lives away from it, in hiding somewhere? In their first life, they might have picked the second option, but he doesn't think they will this time. And he knows, inevitably, that where their children go, he and Baze must follow, so if they succeed, it's probably the Rebellion for all of them.

“I guess,” Baze says, “we'll get used to it.”

They sit there until Jyn comes back, still holding hands, and there's a lot to think about, but they don't say anymore, and when Jyn returns and says she wants to talk to the Rebel Alliance, Chirrut doesn't object.

*

Chirrut insists on going alone to find Mon Mothma, and tells Baze and Jyn to run if they don't get the right coded message from him within a certain amount of time. They won't actually do it, they'll come for him like a pair of idiots, but it seems like the kind of precaution Cassian would approve of. Maybe even Saw would, though they're all avoiding him right now.

He's never been to the Rebel base before, but a few contacts down the line, he's invited, with some wariness. It's not the same base he remembers, but it has the same bustle he remembers, the same military orders barked out, the same dust in his nose. Someone escorts him to a meeting room, where he's left to wait for an hour or more while they decide what to do with him and he wistfully thinks about the roast Baze promised he'd cook when Chirrut gets home.

Mon Mothma comes with an entourage, and she doesn't introduce them, and none of them talk, so Chirrut can't identify them. He can't decide if it's a deliberate intimidation tactic or if they've forgotten he's blind. “Master Imwe, I hear you wished to speak to me,” she says right away, wary but curious.

“A girl under my care wants to help me—she's been fighting with Saw Gerrera, but he doesn't think it's safe to have her around any longer, and she still wants to fight.”

Whatever she was expecting, it wasn't this. “You could have asked another contact about that. How young is she?”

“Old enough to choose to fight. The problem is that when you do background research, you'll recognize her name, and I thought I might as well tell you so I know whether we have to go underground or not.” That makes a few of them shift, uncomfortable. Good. If they're offended that he thinks they might hurt a child, maybe it will shame them into not hurting her.

“What's her name?”

“She has some very good alternate IDs, but her name is Jyn Erso.” A few murmurs, more shifting. “Her father tried to run away from Imperial control before they killed his wife and forced him to come back, and Saw Gerrera took her in, and so did my husband and I.”

Mon Mothma clears her throat. “I'm sorry, are you telling us that you have the daughter of an Imperial scientist and engineer in your household and you're only telling us now?”

“I'm telling you,” he says as cold and clear as he can manage, “that I have a child who has decided that she wants to join the fight, and that maybe she'll have a part of it that has to do with her family someday, but she has more talents than being someone's daughter.”

“I can understand that,” says a familiar voice. He doesn't know the name, just knows he was important enough the first time that people listened to him. “My daughter isn't much younger than yours, I think. Perhaps they'll meet.”

“I'll want to talk to her.” General Draven. Chirrut tries his best not to stiffen up. A lot of what went wrong the first time feels like his fault, but it's not, really, and if Draven trusts him, and Jyn, he's more likely to introduce them to Cassian, wherever he is right now. “And in more depth to you, Imwe.”

Chirrut bows his head. “I understand. Let her be herself if you can, and someday, if there's a way for her to be useful, talk to her about it.”

It's not as easy as that, of course. There's a long, uncomfortable conversation, mostly led by Draven. Three weeks later, on a cold planet Chirrut only has the barest excuse to visit on pilgrimage, Jyn has her own conversation with him, and insists on having it alone. When it's over, she's exhausted and sad and almost vibrating with anger and tension, but she says “I think they'll let me do as much as they let you do,” and she sounds dissatisfied, but at least it's some measure of trust.

*

Chirrut is demoted back to the easiest and most boring of errands for the Rebellion, and Jyn is relegated to assisting him, but she does it grim and determined and without a word of complaint for months on months. Bodhi comes back after his second year at the Academy and seems to know not to ask many questions, so their house is full of more awkward silences than there ever were before, but Bodhi seems relieved to be home, too.

“Are you happy?” Chirrut asks one night when Jyn and Baze have gone to the market to bargain for some food with no subtlety at all, leaving the two of them together.

“I don't know. I make enough money to send home, which is what I wanted, but ...” But the Rooks are uncomfortable with it and don't know what to say to him, and he's aware that his second family has Rebel sympathies, that even Jyn is with them now.

“Is that the only good thing you have to say about it?”

“People like me,” says Bodhi, sounding a little helpless. “And I like them, the ones who are just doing it like me, because it's what there is. Even if not all of them stick around.”

Even if Chirrut didn't know the past, which is a lot like the next few years of the future, he would be glad Bodhi was inexperienced enough on entering the Academy that he didn't get put in a fighter. He knows how many of the Empire's fighter pilots die every year, in Rebel strikes or less organized revolutions or just the course of duty. “If you ever want to leave,” he says, lowering his voice, “you only have to ask us.”

“I really—I really can't. I know you wish I would.”

Not until he meets Galen Erso and earns his trust enough to carry a message, which is why Chirrut is a worse guardian of children than he is of the Whills. “Whatever you think the right thing is, we are always happy to help you do it,” he says, and hopes Bodhi remembers those words in a few years.

“I'll try,” says Bodhi, and changes the subject to Chirrut's latest trip off-world, pretending that he thinks Chirrut is just a tourist and listening to him talk about the smell of grass in the mountains.

*

“They're asking me to do a job without you,” says Jyn halfway into Bodhi's last year at the Academy.

Chirrut's first thought is that it's too soon, but he ignores it and lets Baze be the first to answer, since Baze is a lot less worried about Jyn and the Rebels than Chirrut still is. “What kind of job? Not about your father, I hope.”

“No. I don't think they can find a way to get at him.” She fidgets a little. “They won't tell me much. There's some kind of intelligence operation and I think Draven wants to see if he can really trust me, so he's pairing me up with some operative of his to see how I do.”

Chirrut tries not to hope that it's Cassian or hope that it's not Cassian, just nods. “Well, I'll be happy to stay home and rest my old bones if you're sure you won't need backup.”

“I've got to try doing things on my own sometime, and I'm almost legally an adult. And you know they've got Organa doing things already, and she's younger than I am.”

Jyn is wasted as anything but an intelligence operative, from how fast she's picked apart the Rebels' structure and caught on to their most famous members, even not going on more jobs than Chirrut has. Without having to try so hard to survive after Saw's abandonment, she can put more of her energy into her very quick mind, and it's no surprise Draven is, however grudgingly, coming to see ways he could make use of her. “She doesn't have a father being forced to work for the Empire,” Chirrut points out.

“Like I said, they can't get at him, so I can maybe actually be of use.”

“Good for you,” says Baze, with an annoyed tap on Chirrut's arm. “When are you leaving?”

“A few days. Can't tell you where, sorry. That's probably part of the test.”

Chirrut doesn't like it, but he understands it. “You know how to get in touch if this is an elaborate way of taking you hostage.”

She laughs. Children, no respect for their elders. “Yes, I know. But I don't think this is that. I think they know I want to be useful.”

Some days, Chirrut hardly knows her, but he's so glad that she's living this life and not her last one. “Well, go with my blessing. But take your staff. Never know when someone needs to be taken out at the knees.”

*

Chirrut comes home from the market not two weeks later to find Jyn fuming, talking Baze's ear off about her annoyance with someone. “Ah, welcome back,” he says, and tries not to grin.

“Chirrut, did you ever meet—oh, I can't say it. But he didn't trust me, and worse, he didn't trust me to _do_ anything, so he had his droid babysit me half the mission, and let me tell you, his droid is just as bad as he is, if not worse.”

He completely fails at containing this grin. Cassian and K-2 made just as good an impression in this life as in the last one, then. “What sort of thing were you doing, then?”

“Listening. The operative I was with, he was meeting someone the Rebellion doesn't trust yet, so they wanted extra ears and an extra blaster, and I don't look intimidating, so I got to hang around and pretend to clean the place they were meeting. When the droid wasn't complaining about me.”

Poor Jyn. Chirrut tries to school his face, and he knows that Baze is just as amused from his tone of voice when he answers. “Do you think they'll have you run solo missions again?”

She huffs out a sigh. “I don't know. I hope so, but for all I know he's telling them I'm incompetent and only good as a hostage, so I guess we'll see.” Her favorite chair creaks when she sits down in it, and it was almost new when she came to their house. The passing of time creeps up on Chirrut in the strangest of ways.

“I'm sure he won't tell them you're incompetent,” says Baze, still amused, and Chirrut can't help smiling up at the ceiling, because Cassian and K-2 are the last pieces of the puzzle, and now all they have to do is wait for Galen Erso and his message.

It won't be an easy few years, and he still doesn't know exactly how it's going to happen, but if Cassian trusts Jyn, it's the best outcome he can hope for, and he just has to hope it will work out.

*

Jyn's assignments on her own start out rare and short, but as months pass, they happen a little more often. Chirrut's change too, back to the kind of thing he was doing before, carrying messages, being part of a chain, and once, Mon Mothma sends him a message herself asking if he and Baze will both come, to free some Jedi relics from a stash the Empire seems to have forgotten about. Baze is reluctant to come, but the Rebel Alliance needs to trust him too, so he does come, and they're given care of the relics, which they put in three different places, none of them Jedha. Chirrut is starting to have hope that niJedha can be saved, but he's not willing to count on it.

They celebrate Jyn's true eighteenth birthday with a box on a chain that will keep her kyber crystal safer around her neck, and two months later, they celebrate the birthday on her papers with a new smuggled blaster.

Her missions, more often than not, are with Cassian and K-2, and Draven, when Chirrut just happens to be passing a message to him on one of his own assignments, grudgingly says that for all the complaining he gets from all three of them, they work well together. She's on one of them when Bodhi graduates from the Academy and is given a month's leave to go home before his first assignment.

“Jyn's not here?” Bodhi asks when Chirrut and Baze have greeted him and offered him some dinner and congratulated him on finishing his training.

“Visiting friends,” says Baze. “She'll be back before you have to leave.”

As it turns out, she is, but with only three days to spare on Bodhi's leave. She comes home, according to Baze, bruised and filthy and grinning, and within an hour she and Bodhi have had a screaming fight about her putting herself in danger and him making the danger worse that the neighbors must be fascinated by.

This time, despite his inclination, Chirrut retreats to his room with Baze and lets them figure out the aftermath. “Siblings,” says Baze, when he sees how nervous Chirrut is. “She was talking about her partner, and he was jealous that she's trusting someone else, I think. It won't be easy for them over the next few years, but they'll work it out.”

Sure enough, they do. The next day they go out into niJedha and come back poorer far too much of Bodhi's pay bonus after making a stupid bet at a street race, teasing each other about their bad taste in bets and how much of Bodhi's pay is going to go to gambling, and when Bodhi leaves again, with no idea of when he's going to come back next, they're on good terms.

All the better because it's not a week before Jyn is called away on another mission with Cassian and comes back saying that even K-2 had to admit that she got them out of a tight position this time.

*

Much as he knows time is running out, Chirrut finds it easy to settle into the rhythm of life for the next months—the next two years, in fact. Saw has his last falling out with the Rebels and moves on to more dangerous games, but Chirrut and Baze are still a bridge between the two groups, so it's not as bad an estrangement as the one before. Now that they don't have children to care for, they take more dangerous missions, and take charge of every Jedi relic the Rebel Alliance can safely get, however few there are. When there are rare Force sensitive children the Empire can't find, they save them if they can, and meet some interesting people doing it.

Jyn's missions rarely overlap with their own, but they don't ask her to do anything that makes her into a hostage, and they keep her well away from centers of Imperial operations, as much as she chafes at it. The more Draven trusts her, the more she's sent off on missions alone, infiltrating one place or another, once for six months of no contact and worrying before she shows up triumphant and takes them both out for dinner. She goes on missions with Cassian and K-2 as well, though she never says their names, and always comes back complaining about them but happier than she is after her missions on her own.

Bodhi's leaves are unpredictable in timing and length, so sometimes they miss him completely and sometimes they're all there at once. He doesn't seem happy, but he doesn't talk about deserting, and Chirrut leaves him alone about it as much as he can. Instead, he waits for a mention of Galen Erso, and waits to see just how much they can change with all this work they've done.

*

Bodhi comes home for leave quiet and worried two years into his service, and Chirrut sits him down and tells him to talk, since Baze and Jyn are both home and that's rare and the kind of coincidence the Force likes to exploit.

“I don't know if I should, around everyone,” he says, and he sounds hesitant, but it's a year early. He can't know about the planetkiller yet. It shouldn't be finished yet. “But … Baze, Chirrut, you know who Jyn is, right?”

That freezes all of them. “They do,” says Jyn at last. “More than you do, actually. Why do you ask?”

“Stardust,” he says. Jyn has never told them about that in this life, but they know the word means something to her, and she proves it by freezing. “You told me once that your father called you that. Well, I just got assigned a new route a few months ago, taking supplies to an engineering base, and one of the chief engineers talks to me in the mess while I'm there, and I was talking about my family, and my sister, and he said that he'd have a daughter about your age, and that he always called he Stardust.”

“You know my father?” she whispers. “How is he?”

“I don't know. Probably not too happy with his life, if he's talking with the pilot who delivers their supplies instead of his team. Did you know he was an Imperial?”

There's a silence, but Chirrut doesn't fill it. This is Jyn's choice, to tell him or not tell him what she wants, and Baze must agree, because he grunts a little, but he doesn't say anything. “I knew they were forcing him to work for them. Do you know what they're doing?”

“No. Top secret, and even if they could, they think a cargo pilot is too stupid to tell anything to. But I can tell you about the supplies I'm delivering.”

“Careful what choice you're making,” Baze warns. “You start doing this and someone finds out, you know what they'll think.”

There's a long silence. “This is family,” Bodhi says. “That matters more.”

Jyn clears her throat, and her voice is shaky when she speaks. “Not yet. Maybe find a way to tell him you know me, and see what he does, though. If he … if they've convinced him to be on their side, and it seems like you're telling another loyal Imperial, that might be … better.”

“And when someone overhears it?” Chirrut asks her. “That's dangerous.”

“I can find a way,” says Bodhi, almost stammering in his eagerness. “They don't think I'm important enough to listen to. I'll go slow. But he's your father, you should get to see him somehow.”

Chirrut remembers the rain and the wind and Cassian's intentions and the way Galen Erso never quite got to leave his prison. He doesn't know if he will this time either. “As long as you're careful,” he says, because he can't resist it. “We don't want to lose you in gaining him. But you know we'll help you however you like.”

“There's a house,” says Jyn. “A safehouse the Rebels use, and I have a cache there, and a secure way to get in touch with the Alliance, specifically my partner, from there. If something goes wrong, and you think they start to suspect you, lose them and go there.”

Chirrut almost tells her that Bodhi isn't in the Alliance and she shouldn't be giving secrets away before he realizes that she's just saved Jedha, most likely. If Bodhi doesn't come back home, if he ditches his ship and any trackers and goes somewhere there's no record of him, the planetkiller won't test its weapon on niJedha. “A remote safehouse?” he checks. If the worst happens and Bodhi can't lose them, maybe at least it won't be a whole city that gets killed.

“Remote but not too remote,” she says. “There's some traffic to the moon, but not much—enough to hide one more ship, but not enough that you're within five miles of any locals.”

It's a start. It's better than Chirrut was expecting. It's a path that might let them live this time. “Tell him but don't tell us,” he says. “As few people should know as possible. Though you should probably let your partner know. About all of this, if you think it's safe for Bodhi.”

See what Cassian and Draven do about Galen Erso this time. Maybe if they trust Jyn, they'll trust her father.

*

Bodhi and Jyn leave on the same day, Bodhi on the next stop on his route, not Eadu, and Jyn on a mission that will let her talk to Cassian and tell him whatever she thinks is wise to say.

Chirrut sits and meditates and waits for Baze to say something. He knows it's only a matter of time.

“Do you think we've fixed it?” Baze asks at last. “Do you think we'll all live?”

“I don't know. Perhaps even the Force doesn't.” There are so many ways it could go wrong, and so many ways it could go right.

“And if we fail? Do we try again a third time?”

Twenty more years of relative youth with Baze sounds good in some ways, but doing it an infinite amount of times until they make it better sounds horrible. “Maybe if we fail, next time it's Jyn's turn, or Bodhi's, or Cassian's. I don't think we get that many chances.”

“Good. Still, we'd better make sure it works this time. Don't die on me.”

“You don't die on me either,” says Chirrut. “You're getting slow.”

“Don't talk to me about slow, I saw you almost get your pocket picked without noticing the other day,” says Baze, all grumbled affection, and that's the end of their conversation about it, but both of them are waiting, now, for what Bodhi does, and what the Rebel Alliance does in reponse.

*

Bodhi ferries information in tiny little pieces, to them and to Jyn, usually with the excuse of a drink and just little enough that he could say he's just being indiscreet. He talks about how he's been transporting Jedha's own kyber for this scientific project on one visit, and talks about how rainy it always is on Eadu on another, and says the chief engineer is fond of hearing stories about Bodhi's sister and the rest of his family.

Jyn takes the information to Cassian and Draven, who don't act on it but who listen with keen ears, from what she reports.

She's on a mission alone, nearly done from what Chirrut can tell, and they have about two months by his estimation until Galen gives Bodhi the message, when Cassian Andor shows up at their door one hot afternoon.

“Is Bodhi around?” he asks, innocent and earnest, when he's still on the doorstep. “I'm a friend of his from the Academy.”

Chirrut would almost believe him, if he didn't know that voice so well. “Come in,” he says. “No, I don't think Bodhi has leave for a while yet, he was only here a month ago.”

“Too bad. I just knew this was his home, and he always talked about it, so when my route took me here ...” Charming, playing some kind of game. Maybe waiting to see if they'll be indiscreet, though he should know better. Chirrut shows him in, though, and sits him down at the kitchen table and goes to the bedroom to fetch Baze, who claimed he was going to read but is instead snoring.

Baze doesn't say anything when confronted with Cassian, but his hand tightens on Chirrut's. “You're looking for Bodhi? He's not here.”

“I know,” says Cassian, dropping his act and his voice. “But people might be watching, when they realize he's missing, which shouldn't be long now. I've already talked to Jyn, and she's pulling out of her mission. She said that nothing happens without you two, but Bodhi has a message for the Alliance.”

Chirrut isn't stupid enough to say that it's early, but he wants to. “Is he safe?” he asks instead.

“I got his message from the safehouse he shouldn't know about, saying he's defecting to be with his family and has important information about a weapon, so probably not, but if Imperials are on his trail, I should have warning from my security systems on that moon.” Cassian stands up. “Pack up. You're respected operatives and Jyn and Bodhi's family. My droid has our ship idling. Get whatever you need and come with me.”

Baze doesn't waste any more time on talking, just goes for the necessities. He'll pack for both of them, so Chirrut doesn't move, just assesses Cassian and his intentions. They're much more clouded than they were the first time, but it depends on Draven's orders and how much Cassian trusts Jyn now. “Bodhi wouldn't lie, and wouldn't be misled either,” he says. “Whatever he says, you can trust him.”

“An Imperial deserter?”

Chirrut spreads his hands. “Where do your fighter pilots get their training, Captain? Aren't we all deserters of some kind or another? I know you don't control the whole Rebellion, but listen to him. And listen to Jyn.”

“I recognize you,” says Cassian. “I thought I did. From one of my missions. You stumbled into my table. Did you know there was another operation in the bar that night? You weren't supposed to. I didn't, until later.”

He's sharp, and Chirrut has missed him, but he can't say that right now. “I didn't know about an operation. I just stumble into people who seem like they won't hit me, and from what little I overheard of your conversation, you seemed like a good bet.”

“Hmm,” says Cassian, clearly not believing him, and then Baze is there with their weapons and their other supplies and, it seems, their kyber crystal, and the three of them are off.

*

“There is a large chance this is a trap,” K-2 says snippily as they're flying towards whatever safe house Bodhi is in. “And that they're all in on it.”

“Don't tell me,” says Cassian. “And Jyn wouldn't be in on it.”

Baze taps his foot against Chirrut's like he isn't already listening. It's a relief. If Cassian trusts her that much, he's going to trust her enough to fight the leadership of the Alliance for Bodhi more than he did the first time. Then it's a question of if Draven and Mon Mothma trust all of them enough to take action before they start testing the planetkiller.

“She is reckless,” K-2 says, displeased, but there are only minimal grumbles after that.

The trip feels quick and endless all at once, and Cassian talks to someone quietly a few times, ducking just out of earshot (and farther than most people bother to, so he must suspect that Chirrut can hear a little better from getting used to listening) to do it, until they're landing on a moon that smells unpleasantly of bog. “I'll go first,” says Cassian. “I want to make sure your Bodhi didn't bring Imperials with him when he came.”

“Of course,” says Chirrut, and they wait as Cassian and K-2 go out.

It's barely a minute before K-2 is back, sounding displeased. “Jyn got here first. You can come in.” His huffs sound just like Baze's when he's upset, and Chirrut is going to horrify Baze with that someday when they're old men and they've survived this.

Mostly, Chirrut leaves Jedha for other dry places, where stone ruins might have survived a long time. It's been a long time since he was somewhere so wet, and he grimaces at the way his shoes stick to the mud on his way into the house, where K-2 lets them in to the sound of a tumult of conversation, Cassian and Jyn and Bodhi all talking over each other.

“Chirrut, Baze, I am so glad to see you,” Bodhi says as soon as the door shuts behind them.

“Are you okay?” Baze asks, maybe thinking about Bor Gullet and Bodhi's empty voice insisting he's the pilot and he has the message just like Chirrut is. “Not hurt, no one following you?”

“I don't think so. Dug a tracker out of my arm, Jyn told me where to check for it last time I was home. And I'm okay. Just … doing the right thing. They're building a weapon.”

“You think, and an Imperial engineer says,” says K-2.

“An engineer working under duress,” says Jyn. “You two, did Cassian introduce himself, or did he just come steal you?”

“What if I wanted to use an alias?” Cassian complains, but there's something light in his voice, easy partnership that only K-2 got the first time. “We're all here now, Mr. Rook. Where's your message?”

Bodhi sounds shaken but not hurt or tortured like he was the first time. “It's a message from Jyn's father. Jyn, do you want to hear it alone?”

“No. I trust all of you to hear it, whatever it is.”

Chirrut listens to the message. It's not much different from the first one, only Galen Erso says the planetkiller is almost done, not complete. He says there's a weakness, one he built in, and if they get the plans, they can find it. He tells Jyn that he loves her, and to do what he can't to save as many people as she can.

There's silence in the wake of the message, and Chirrut makes himself break it. “So, what do we do? Go to Eadu and get your father before they realize he's leaked information?”

“We need to talk to the Alliance,” says Cassian firmly. “Maybe we retrieve Erso, maybe we try to find out more about this supposed planetkiller.”

“We've known they were working on something big for a while,” says Jyn. “Why shouldn't it be this?”

“I think it's likely,” says Cassian. “I just don't want it to be true. We need to talk to the Alliance. Rook, thank you for the message. K-2, Jyn, get on this call with me? Draven will want to talk to you both. Master Malbus, Master Imwe ...”

“We'll stay here with Bodhi,” says Baze. “And make something to eat.”

Chirrut wants to eavesdrop, and see what path they're going to take through this, whether they're going to try Eadu or Scarif or something else completely. Instead, he goes over to Bodhi and clasps his shoulder. “You did the right thing.”

“I hope so. No, I know so, but I hope I did it the right way.” Bodhi is shaking a little, with stress and fear, but Chirrut isn't going to mention it. “I've told some people there's someone I wanted to be with recently, that I was upset there was so long left in my service before I could marry them, so I'm hoping they'll think I just ran off to get married instead of defecting. Jyn told me it was a way to make things safer, and I made sure I made a stop after Eadu so they won't think it was related to Galen, too. Do you think it will work?”

“If nothing else, it will give us time. Good job,” says Baze. “Now sit down, I found the tea.”

Baze does all the cooking, unwilling to inflict Chirrut's skills on anyone else, even if they've had twenty years to improve. Chirrut sits with Bodhi and reassures him as well as he can until Jyn comes back. “Bodhi, they want to talk to you.”

Bodhi stands up without a word, and Chirrut can hear her telling him that he's going to be fine, it's only a few questions, leaving Baze and Chirrut waiting for the rest of them.

“It's up to them now,” says Baze, like he's been waiting for the chance. “We got them this far, but now we just fight when they tell us to.”

It's occurred to Chirrut a few times that if they do their job well enough they might get told to stay out of the fight while the Alliance sends its best soldiers, not two men they barely know and hardly trust. Now, he thinks he'll fight them on that if he has to. He began this, long ago. He wants to see it though. “I think they'll manage it, this time. The Force is with us.”

Baze doesn't have anything to say to that, and the two of them wait in silence for one hour, then two, then longer, while the food gets colder and gets warmed up again and they finally give up and eat their own shares, until Jyn comes out again.

“Scarif,” she says, and it sounds like she's been crying. “There's a storage facility, and if we take enough, they won't know that we came for the plans for the weapon, and if we can find the weakness and the weapon before they realize it, then we've won a victory. We're infiltrating in three days, when there's enough of a force mustered, and if we survive and succeed, we're going to find my father.”

Chirrut stands up. “We're fighting with you.”

“Of course you are,” says Bodhi, coming up behind her. “We wouldn't do it without you.”

*

It's different and not different, the second time. They go with all the Alliance's resources and plans, and they go with time. They also go without the urgency Chirrut and Baze feel, remembering their city destroyed. They know something terrible is coming, but it's not personal for them, and Chirrut feels like the old man he jokingly calls himself, fretting because no one else is and he feels like someone should.

“We're going to do this, Master Imwe,” says Cassian as they travel to meet the other operatives who will be helping them. “I hear good things about you and your husband, from command and from Jyn. We'll do this.”

K-2 mutters something about the odds, but Chirrut smiles anyway. Cassian may not believe in miracles himself, but he's very good at being comforting, even if some of the comfort might be a lie. “Hopefully we won't lose much while we do it.”

“I think we're all here because the sacrifice is worth it.”

“Maybe,” says Baze from nearby. “But we're going to try not to make a sacrifice like that.”

“You raised them both well,” says Cassian, and goes off to talk to someone else whose courage seems to be failing them.

Chirrut stands there, and reaches for Baze's hand. If it goes wrong again, they'll go together this time. He won't leave Baze alone, not for a minute. They've worked too hard for that. He takes a deep breath, and starts the mantra he's avoided in this second life, because it seemed like it should wait for this last moment.

After a moment, Baze joins in, quiet but not grudging. “The Force is with me, and I am one with the Force.”

Nobody else joins in, but Chirrut hears Bodhi, in the pilot's seat again but with a different, less memorable, callsign, exhale, and he hears Jyn stop Cassian on his progress around the ship and both of them stop and wait in silence for a while.

*

They live.

The Empire is unprepared for them, but they still fight fiercely, and there's still a battle in the sky to open a shield gate. Jyn and Cassian beam out the plans instead of carrying them out, both wounded but alive, when they stumble down to the beach where the Rebel forces are behind a hastily-built barricade of a fallen Empire ship, and Chirrut wonders if they had to do that too.

Bodhi, brave and terrified, stays on the ship and then sends someone out to shout to them that the Rebel fleet took heavy losses but that if they run now, the shield gate is open for a few precious minutes.

Chirrut runs to where he knows Jyn and Cassian are, Baze flanking him on the other side, and his side hurts in a way that he knows will mean stitches later, and Baze is gritting his teeth against the pain of at least one broken bone, but the four of them stumble onto the ship alive, K-2 stumbling behind them complaining that his chassis is compromised, the other survivors behind them, and as soon as the door shuts, Bodhi is flying them all away.

“We did it,” Chirrut tells Baze with a grin when they're panting in the hold of the ship, not bothering to climb up to the cockpit to see Bodhi, who has them in hyperspeed as soon as he can get them out of the atmosphere.

“You say that,” says Baze, “and then we're going to crash into an asteroid coming out of hyperspeed and I will blame you.”

Jyn, not far away, sorting through a medkit with Cassian, laughs. “I think, for right now, we're going to be fine.”

*

They are, and they aren't. The plans are lost, and it's weeks before they're found again, just in time for the planetkiller, which they call the Death Star, to be completed and hovering over the Rebellion's base. Galen Erso doesn't make it off Eadu alive, killed by the old friend who forced him back into the Empire's clutches, and Jyn screams at them all for not saving him fast enough, saving him well enough, before throwing herself into the battle that will use her father's life's work to destroy it.

When the battle is over, on the day Chirrut died the first time, he and Baze slip away from the celebration, and it's not long before Bodhi finds them, and then K-2, complaining that Cassian is busy, and then Cassian himself, with Jyn too, walking close enough that Chirrut thinks they might be holding hands.

“None of this would have happened if it weren't for you two,” says Bodhi, after they've passed around a bottle a few times. “If you hadn't helped raise me and Jyn, I mean, and worked for the Rebels too. I don't know who I would have gone to with that message if it weren't for you. I don't even know if I would have taken the message, done the right thing.”

Baze taps Chirrut's knee, but Chirrut already knows it's time to talk, whether or not they're believed. “You would have,” says Chirrut.

“You can't know that.”

“Of course you would have,” says Jyn, and takes a swig of a drink, “but that's not what you mean. Right, Chirrut? You're talking about why you and Baze always seem to know more than you should.”

“We know exactly as much as we should,” Baze grumbles.

Chirrut elbows him. “We do,” he agrees, “but that's not where to start.” He turns to the rest of them, all of them alive and loose with drink and triumphant. The Empire isn't gone yet, but they've managed one victory, and Chirrut's knees will probably hold him for a few more. “We're going to start today and twenty years ago, and we're going to tell you a story. It's up to you if you believe it.”


End file.
